Toensing: Doesn't Hillary Clinton Know the Law?

"Does the former secretary of state not know the law?" asks Victoria Toensing in the WSJ. "By statute, she was required to make specific security decisions for defenseless consulates like Benghazi, and was not permitted to delegate them to anyone else." Yet,

In her interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer last week, Hillary Clinton said "I was not making security decisions" about Benghazi, claiming "it would be a mistake" for "a secretary of state" to "go through all 270 posts" and "decide what should be done." And at a January 2013 Senate hearing, Mrs. Clinton said that security requests "did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them."

Toensing outlines the requirements of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999 (SECCA) signed into law by her husband, President Bill Clinton, on November 29, 1999, and concludes with this observation.:

Mrs. Clinton either personally waived these security provisions as required by law or she violated the law by delegating the waiver to someone else. If it was the latter, she shirked the responsibility she now disclaims: to be personally knowledgeable about and responsible for the security in a consulate as vulnerable as Benghazi.

White House Benghazi Scandal Spin Falling Apart

A single email obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act request sums up the Benghazi scandal, writes John Hinderaker:

This one, by Benjamin Rhodes, a White House political operative, shows the administration’s priorities on the Friday before Susan Rice’s infamous tour of the Sunday talk shows. ... The overriding imperative was to deflect attention from the 'broader failure of policy' that led to the disaster.

"In an effort to spin the situation, [White House press secretary Jay] Carney claimed the talking points provided to Rice [in the above email] were about the numerous protests occurring in the Middle East and weren't specifically about Benghazi," reports the Washington Free Beacon.

Fox News' Bret Baier calls Carney's performance "surreal" in his description of the White House press conference to Gretchen Carlson in this Fox News video, which also contains clips of a back-and-forth between Carney and ABC reporter Jonathan Karl:

What Difference Does It Make, Hillary???

More, apparently, than the former Secretary of State was prepared to admit during her testimony before Congress. Reports the Washington Post,

A long-delayed Senate intelligence committee report released Wednesday spreads blame among the State Department and intelligence agencies for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

“The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya — to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets — and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement. [snip]

The bipartisan report lays out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012, on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the Libyan city of Benghazi. It says the State Department failed to increase security at its diplomatic mission despite warnings and faults intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

The committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the diplomatic compound in an emergency.

The report does not answer questions on "the most politicized aspect of the incident" — whether the Obama Administration and the Clinton State Department deliberately played down the attack's terrorist origins.

Nor, apparently, does it explain what business the CIA outpost, kept secret from even the U.S. military, was conducting in Benghazi under such deep cover.

Remembering 9-11

"A year after the first US ambassador in 33 years was killed on duty, Chris Stephen, one of the first western reporters on the scene in Benghazi, pieces together what really happened from witness accounts, official reports, and the ruins of the compound," writes the U.K. Guardian newspaper.

Thus begins one of the most enlightening reports to date on the 9-11 Benghazi terrorist attack — and one that should thoroughly embarrass the US government and the American media.

Concludes the article:

One year after the killings, no suspects have appeared in court, either in Libya or in the US. Until that happens, and until the gap between claims made in the US and reality on the ground is explained, the American public will remain in the dark about the events of 11 September 2012 in Benghazi.

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UPDATE: Michelle Malkin writes:

Before we head to Syria to avenge the mass murder of their kids, how about we finish avenging ours?

When I say “finish,” of course I really mean “start.” A dozen years after the 9/11 attacks, the trials against the jihadist plotters who incinerated pregnant women, firefighters, grandparents, newlyweds, toddlers, and schoolkids on their first-ever plane rides have yet to begin.

Justice not only has been delayed and denied. Justice has been demoted, disowned, and deserted. Justice for the 9/11 victims and families isn’t blindfolded. She’s gagged and hog-tied. The terror-coddling Obama White House squandered precious years trying to shut down Gitmo to appease the peaceniks, transnationalists, and Muslim grievance-mongers...

Read the rest.

Darwish: Fake Outrage in the Martin/Zimmerman Case

"Having lived half my life in the Middle East, I am especially sensitive to recognizing fake outrage and shaming forced upon ordinary people by the social system," writes Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish.

AP Photo

Every society uses shaming to define its morality, but some societies go too far in using and abusing shaming words that make people cringe and shrink whenever they are mentioned. Such intentional shaming is often fake and bogus done for the purpose of manipulating and controlling others. In America, expressions like 'racist' and in the Muslim world expressions like 'apostate' can do the trick of silencing citizens and keep them muzzled and beaten down....

Whelton: Death by Media

Was President Obama led astray by his friends in the media? Yes, writes Clark Whelton in City Journal:

They intended no harm to the president, needless to say. But by withholding the criticism that prods public officials into doing a better job, by choosing not to print negative stories and commentaries about the Obama administration, the press corps tempted the president and his staff with visions of invincibility. The pro-Obama news crew—with a boost from the Nobel Peace Prize committee—confirmed the president’s exalted view of himself. They are in part responsible for encouraging Obama to think that he could tamper with the truth about Benghazi and get away with it. ...

And with each alibi they provided, with each news story they slanted to assist Obama at the polls, they deprived the president of the honest feedback that public officials may not want but desperately need. A biased press corps steadily pushed the president closer to the precipice where he now precariously stands.

In the morning, those who have engaged in whorish behavior—or in this case, those rewarded with invitations to insider Washington parties and access to private e-mail lists—are somehow astonished by a lack of respect. Members of the media, including Associated Press reporters, after favoring and flattering Obama for years, were stunned to discover that Obama’s Department of Justice was treating them like tarts and had targeted the AP with secret subpoenas.

The end of the affair is always painful and poignant. Unaccustomed to sunlight, fleeing suspicions of malfeasance and outright criminality, the Obama administration is pleading guilty to incompetence and ignorance. Benghazi? Hey, who knew the Libyans to whom we had been secretly running guns would turn them on us? We didn’t want to make things worse by calling the cops. Besides, we knew the media would let the story die. The IRS? Shock. Outrage. Never heard of the place.

An independent press is a compass, a vital part of the American system of checks and balances. It can provide the ship of state with mid-course corrections. But a compass that swings any way the helmsman wants is worse than useless. It points the way to disaster.

Scandal and Distrust Trifecta

"Let's take a breath and take stock, shall we?" writes Dave Carter @ ricochet.com.

We have the IRS acting more like the KGB, singling out groups and people for harassment on the basis of political philosophy.  We have efforts to learn about the deaths of four Americans under attack overseas, and the subsequent lies that our government told us about that attack, labeled as a sideshow and a political circus by the Commander in Chief.  We have the federal government secretly gathering months of phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters in what AP's management has termed a, "massive and unprecedented intrusion." ... As David Burge observed on Twitter, "MSNBC must be having a hard time deciding which story to ignore first."

As if that weren't enough for Obama, abortionist Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty of first-degree murder for brutally killing newborn babies (a practice Obama refused to vote against as a legislator), Obamacare is going off the rails in a slow-motion train wreck, and immigration reform—Obama's latest play to a political constituency—appears less persuasive after learning the Boston marathon terrorists were recent immigrant-citizens who raked in at least $100,000 in welfare dollars.

The IRS scandal offers valuable lessons, particularly for Obamacare and immigration reform proponents, argues Paul Mirengoff at powerlineblog.com:

Benghazi Hearings: What We Learned

We learned 7 things from the Benghazi whistleblowers, argues Bryan Preston, despite Republicans' mishandling of the whistleblowers' hearing.

1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one — ready-to-go special military operations forces in Tripoli were told twice NOT to go to Benghazi to rescue Americans under assault, even though a diplomat's team was able to arrive in Benghazi from Tripoli to offer aid before the assault ended. "This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military," said one military officer.
2. Ambassador Stevens' reason for going to Benghazi has been cleared up — he was there at the bidding of Hillary Clinton who wished to have a permanent post in Benghazi.
3. Hillary Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway -- US deputy diplomat Greg Hicks spoke with Clinton personally via phone at 2 a.m. telling her it was a terrorist attack.
4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence — when one whistleblower (a career diplomat) questioned Susan Rice's claim that Benghazi was a video-induced protest, his career was sidelined and he was subsequently demoted.
5. "The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya" — the video was pure political invention, and blaming the movie did "immeasurable damage " to our relations with Libya and delayed the FBI investigation.
6. Democrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroy Mark Thompson — Thompson was a member of the Foreign Emergency Support Team, which was cut out of the decision making during the attack.
7. House hearings are a poor way to determine who did what and why during and after the attack — given the extensive misinformation and cover up, Benghazi deserves a probe by a special prosecutor.

Preston argues that the Republicans mishandled the hearing by compressing too much information in one day's testimony. Read the full article for greater insight.

UPDATE:  Jonah Goldberg also has a great article, Bad Faith and Benghazi.

If you see a child struggling in the ocean, you have no idea how long she will flail and paddle before she goes under for the last time. The moral response is to swim for her in the hope that you get there in time. If you fail and she dies, you can console yourself that you did your best to rescue her.

But if you just stand on the beach and do nothing as the child struggles for life, saying, "Well, there's just no way I can get to her in time," it doesn't really matter whether you guessed right or not. You didn't try.

But we know the administration ordered others who were willing, able and obliged to come to the consulate's rescue to "stand down." They in effect told the lifeguards, "Don't get out of your chairs."

What will Mainstream Media Do Now?

With the election over, MSM will now be forced to report serious issues they largely covered up during the campaign. IBD lists a few of the stories MSM will soon "discover."

The economy really does stink.

The press studiously ignored the ongoing economic catastrophe under Obama, while parading any "green shoot" they could find that suggested growth was around the corner.

Don't be surprised if, after the election, they start to notice that three years of subpar growth have left the middle class further behind and more mired in poverty, and created a vast pool of long-term unemployed.

Massive debt and entitlement crisis loom.

Despite four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits and a national debt that now exceeds total GDP, the media largely treated the debt crisis with a collective yawn.

Ditto the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security. These crises are nevertheless real and will have to be dealt with soon, a fact the press will almost certainly acknowledge after Nov. 6.

The debt ceiling is fast approaching.

The Treasury Dept. warned last week that it expects the government to reach its borrowing limit before the end of the year. Congress and the White House will have to deal with that just as they're trying to avoid the fiscal cliff.

ObamaCare is fundamentally flawed.

Reports are sure to appear pointing out the law's lack of cost controls, its adverse impact on doctors and hospitals, and the fact that, after spending $1.76 trillion, it will still leave 30 million uninsured.

Obama's deficit cutting plan won't work.

The press let the president get away with one of the biggest whoppers yet — that his tax hikes on "the rich" would be enough to pay for his spending binge and bring down the deficit $4 trillion. Obama's own budget proved this wasn't the case. And after the election, you can bet the media will be "shocked" to find that his numbers didn't add up.

Questions about Benghazi still remain.

After almost two full months spent burying the Benghazi story, expect the mainstream press to wake up and notice that, as the Washington Post admitted in an editorial last Friday, "a host of unanswered questions" remains. So far, only Fox News has bothered to pursue this story, but we expect that other outlets will pick up on it after the elections.